


into forever, we fall

by bountifulsilences



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Character Study, Hurt, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Not A Fix-It, Tony Stark-centric, can i hug him even though he's dead, this is me crying over marvel killing tony when it should have been me
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-10
Updated: 2019-07-10
Packaged: 2020-06-26 01:18:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 799
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19757647
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bountifulsilences/pseuds/bountifulsilences
Summary: If they didn’t forget him, honoured this one good deed by refusing to let him wash away like a chalk outline, all the anguish building up to his final harrowing breaths would be worth it. Every single one.





	into forever, we fall

**Author's Note:**

> a bitch needs to sleep but a bitch can't stop crying over tony stark. life is cruel.

For years he painted death as an unattainable escape. Elevated his demise to a privilege money couldn’t buy, as an impenetrable wall stood before him, barricading his body from the dangers his world held. Wounds were abundant, his body was littered in scars birthed from torture, battle, and his father’s belt from when he had too much to drink and destroying his workplace couldn’t calm his insatiable anger. 

It let him decay as though he was six feet underground, soil leaching the nourishment from his body and ripping his skin from bone, exposing the human beneath. But dying was a pipe dream, something life convinced him he could never have. Not entirely. Not now. When his lifeline threatened to snap, something would hold it together until the salve healed his body just enough. Enough to last until the next battle arrived. 

Enough to ensure he wouldn’t pass until he had reached the full capacity of human suffering and then some more, because the universe was nothing if not ambitious. It was a malevolent conspirator that spun a web where life entailed grief and mourning but also immeasurable and agonising pain. Injuries healed, but no body was free from the damage each tragedy left behind. 

An imprint. A mark. An ownership. A part of him belonged to his terrifying tormentor. 

When his life had been a series of excruciating afflictions, paranoia and distrust overshadowing his every move and every carefully established relationship, a moment of peace was an inane fantasy. After all, who could manipulate his desolate world and colour the grey clouds whites, scrape the blood from the pavement on which he trudged, and catch the water before it could drench him?

No one. Not Pepper, not Rhodey, not Happy, and not even his own child. A gift he should have known he would never last to see flourish from a bud into a magnificent oak, towering in excellence over the world as it rose from the ashes, reborn. He had spent too much time in depression, too many words gone by unsaid, and now with his heart choking and arm burning, he realised that the universe had taken everything from him. 

It had taken and taken and taken, until then. His final act of heroism, a sacrifice he was forced to make, assigned to him since birth. No backhanded slaps and thunderous hail of curses could have stopped this. No wormhole consuming his body as he drifted in the terrifying abyss. And definitely no mad titan whose spear was sharper than his words.

When he would be carried into the ground, sealed airtight in his coffin, the stories he could never extricate from the depths of his traumatised mind would remain on his carcass. A blemish of a burn. Bullet wounds. Unsheathed swords penetrating unguarded skin. Betrayal and survival. They would expose the secrets he never could.

Should they take him from the demolished home he had so meticulously built, garner the strength to carry him elsewhere and give him a burial he wasn’t sure he deserved, he hoped that Rhodey or Happy didn’t see the real him. Not when he knew that his skin was marred and there was questionable stains that they could never know an answer for. 

An intricate collection of complexities had forged him, mistakes and lessons and suffering and unkindness. Riddles loitered on his canvas, one that he had spent a lifetime striving to complete and now that it was, the infinity stones in place and the years he fled from finally catching up to him, he could only stare at himself. A product of time and a product of experience. 

Perhaps he wasn’t pleasant to see, an abomination if nothing else ( _was he the Dorian Gray of their time?_ ) but he had done this. This action, the one he was sent to earth for, it was the one thing he hadn’t fucked up. Hadn’t ruined as he tried to save the planet he held so dear to his heart.

He wasn’t a hero, far from it in fact. But he had tried as hard as he could, gave his all in everything he did, and wanted what everyone else wanted: a world worth living for. Maybe he wouldn’t live long enough to see that, his heartbeat plummeting and darkness clouding Pepper from his eyes so he couldn’t see her frantic gaze as she eased him into wherever he was destined to go, but he did what he had to. 

A second chance for life to thrive.

He could only hope that it did. And if they didn’t forget him, honoured this one good deed by refusing to let him wash away like a chalk outline, all the anguish building up to his final harrowing breaths would be worth it. Every single one.


End file.
